I'm often bewildered by the complaints people make about mobile phones. Not other people's mobile phones, you understand – their own. ‘You can't be out of reach' they complain, or sentiments to that effect. Well of course you are. You can be out of the way with your mobile phone any time you want. You can turn it off. You can set it to silent, you can go to central Wales, where there are no mobile phone signals. The problem with your phone is not that it won't let you rest, but that you won't leave it alone. The Dad who takes his work phone on holiday, the teenager who keeps checking her texts during lunch with the grandparents, the…. person who won't turn the damn thing off when they're part of some sort of audience. They have nobody to blame but themselves. Themselves, and their all too human nature.

There are various reasons for keeping your mobile phone on. Well, crucially, I count two: 1) Wanting to know the world is still there; or 2) Wanting the world to know that you are still there. I am guilty of the former, myself. I spent three years at university feeling like an extra in a film about somebody else's life¹ and checking facebook, e-mail, text messages, twitter and h2g2 are ways of checking that the world hasn't forgotten I am here. I am also guilty of the second. The logic of answering the midnight phone call is surely that if someone is phoning you at this hour it must be important. Extend that logic to its natural conclusion and it runs: I can't not be there² somebody might need me.

That might sound like an egotistical attitude, and potentially it is. If you're the person who can't accept that the company can cope without you for a week, then you might want to take a look at your colleagues. On the other hand, of course, it might be that your colleagues are a waste of space, and that they really can't cope without you. I'm not going to get bogged down with that, it isn't really my point. My point is to focus on the people who are aware that, theoretically, they could be useful to someone somewhere at almost any point. Turning your phone of, putting yourself ahead of the needs of these theoretical people, feels selfish.

See that's the thing you can't just turn off. You can't just not care. Especially if the theoretical people are actual people with actual problems that may mean that any time now they might need you to come running. That is far more taxing that having a mobile phone. It doesn't just means you have to be contactable at all time, it means you have to be ready at all times to drop everything and come running. For these people the mobile phone is a boon. It means you can still be contacted more or less wherever you are, but can stray from the immediate range of a landline safe in the knowledge that you are not out of reach. The next time somebody starts whining at you about the curse of mobile phones, tell them that. I bet you get a seat to yourself on the train.

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benjaminpmoore

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